


Nothing New

by notastranger



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M, Mostly Fluff, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 05:06:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/922358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notastranger/pseuds/notastranger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Gottlieb has a hard time admitting his feelings -- even harder if he doesn't understand them very well himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing New

Shatterdome’s celebration after shutting the Breach lasted well into the night, but eventually the jubilation gave way to exhaustion, and a new day meant new work. There were reports to write, equipment to salvage, and memorials to plan. The future of the PPDC was uncertain, but there was certainly enough to do to keep everyone busy for weeks to come.

Raleigh Becket was grateful for the quiet that morning as left his quarters. He had arrived at the Shatterdome during the height of the kaiju crisis and it had been non-stop ever since. It was refreshing to be greeted by nothing but the faint hum of the fluorescent lights above as he made his way to the mess hall, planning to pick up breakfast for himself and Mako, who was still dozing in his bed.

A familiar set of footfalls broke the silence and he turned to look behind him. Dr. Hermann Gottlieb was at the end of the hallway. “A moment of your time, Ranger Becket?” the mathematician called out politely.

Raleigh nodded and waited for Dr. Gottlieb to catch up with him. The man had washed off the blood and grime from the previous day and had changed into a clean shirt and sweater vest. His hair was neatly combed back and he looked like he was off to have tea in his study instead of having just helped save the world the previous day.

“What’s up?” Raleigh asked, surprised that Hermann’s colorful lab partner wasn’t with him.

“I, ah, had a question for you.” Hermann leaned on his cane and looked unusually uncertain. “About drifting.”

It was rare for any member of the K-Science team to ask Raleigh questions about anything, let alone drifting. “Sure, but maybe you’d want to ask Mako instead, she knows more of the science behind it.”

Hermann shook his head. “Under the circumstances I don’t think it’s appropriate to ask her,” he replied hurriedly, and if Raleigh didn’t know better, he would have sworn that the other man was blushing. “Besides, you’ve drifted with two different people.” He smiled thinly. “More empirical data, yes?”

Raleigh nodded, continuing towards the mess hall, slowing his pace so that Dr. Gottlieb could keep up. “So what’s your question?”

“Have you found in your personal experience that, due to the nature of the intimacy of a neural handshake, certain feelings for your partner can arise that you otherwise might not have anticipated?”

“No,” Raleigh replied honestly. “But my brother and I were always close so we knew what to expect when we drifted. And Mako… well, this will sound corny, but the first time we sparred, I knew—“

Hermann interrupted with an irritated sigh. “Yes, bully for you, Ranger Becket.” His cane beat out a measured staccato as they walked. “But, say you _were_ to feel something unusual, would you simply ascribe it to the after-effects of a drift?”

Raleigh paused and looked at him. Hermann’s face was carefully neutral, despite the way he was twisting his hand around the handle of his cane like he was trying to snap it off. “Probably not. You can learn new things about your partner, but the way you feel about them, that’s already there.”

Something akin to panic flashed in the mathematician’s eyes and… was he blushing again? This conversation was starting to weird Raleigh out. “Also,” he added, “I really don’t think I’m the one you should be having this conversation with.”

Hermann scowled. “Thank you for answering my questions,” he said sharply, his tone indicating that he had also had enough of their conversation. “Enjoy your trip to the mess hall, I must be heading to my lab now.”

Raleigh was initially content to say nothing in return, but he couldn’t help but notice the way Hermann’s shoulders sagged as he reached the end of the hall. “Doctor Gottlieb?” he called out, right before the man turned the corner.

Hermann looked back, his expression painfully lost, before closing down once more. “Yes? What is it?”

“This probably won’t sound scientific enough for you, but I’m pretty sure that whatever feelings we experience in the drift aren’t one-sided. You wouldn’t be compatible otherwise.”

Hermann’s eyes widened and Raleigh bit back a smile. “You saved the world, Doctor, you deserve to be happy as much as the rest of us.” And if Doctor Gottlieb had made some sort of undignified squeak in response before hurriedly resuming his stride, well, Raleigh wouldn’t mention it.

Except perhaps to Mako.

~*~

Hermann entered the K-Science lab and immediately paused. Something was different.

A second, more thoughtful scan of his surroundings revealed the answer. Dr. Geiszler’s side of the lab was _clean_. No kaiju innards littered the floor, and all of the various jerry-rigged contraptions and surgical instruments were neatly placed on their carts. It wasn’t immaculate, but it was certainly close enough.

Hermann walked to his desk and discovered that it had been wiped clean of chalk dust. A hot cup of tea was waiting for him.

“Hey!” The boisterous voice of his colleague made him glance up quickly. Newton looked surprisingly refreshed, considering what he had been through in the last two days. The rough stubble on his face was gone and his clean white shirt was tucked neatly into his skinny jeans. He had even managed to get his glasses fixed (or had finally found his spare pair). He smiled at Hermann brightly. “How’s it going, man?”

Hermann blinked, stuttering silently over various sentences before replying ineloquently, “You cleaned.”

Newton laughed. “Yeah, I know. Crazy, isn’t it?” He darted over to his workstation, straightening up papers and kaiju specimens with a nervous energy. “Marshall Hansen is going to be here any minute and how weird is it that he’s Marshall now but he seems pretty cool, right? I want to talk to him about how the two of us should put together some sort of lecture tour or maybe a web series if he says we have to stick around here for a while because the world _totally_ needs to know how we saved it and I don’t want the higher ups to spin some sort of bland story that’s all wham bam thank you Gipsy Danger ma’am, people should learn about the science behind all of it –“

“Newton.” Hermann raised a hand and the biologist’s rambling immediately ceased. “I need to talk to you.”

Newton looked at him expectantly, bouncing idly on his heels. He managed to endure the silence for several seconds before raising an eyebrow. “Y’know, when you tell someone you need to talk to them, usually the next thing you do is actually _talk_ —“

“Give me a minute,” Hermann snapped. His gaze dropped and he leaned against his desk. “It’s not easy for me to say this,” he muttered. “But I feel, somehow, that I owe you an apology.”

“What for?” Newton asked, confused.

“For insulting your work and your intelligence over the years,” Hermann responded. “Your methods are consistently reckless and unorthodox, but that doesn’t give me the right to be cruel and mock your expertise.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it.” Newton smiled easily. “I never took it personally. Now, insulting my music collection, that was pretty harsh, dude, I think Queen’s harmonics could totally hold their own against—“

“Would you please stop being so flippant, I’m trying to be serious here.” Hermann glared at his lab partner. “It is so _very_ difficult to get along with you, you antagonize me at every turn knowing _full well_ it will provoke a response in me, all of that _must_ have been in retaliation for my disdain of your scientific credentials.”

Newton sighed and dropped his smile. “Dude, I drove you crazy because you’re the same age as me but you act like an old man and wouldn’t know how to have fun even if there was a mathematical formula for it. But I don’t _hate_ you, jeez. In fact, considering how we managed to last this long without trying to kill one another, I’m pretty sure you’re the closest thing I have to a best friend now.”

Hermann merely looked away. Newton blinked, surprised, then frowned and turned back to his desk. “You know what, forget it. I accept your apology, you can go back to hating me with a clear conscience.”

“I don’t hate you,” Hermann murmured, shrinking back against his desk as if hurt.

“Sure you don’t.” Newton angrily re-arranged some electronic parts with a loud clang. “You just can’t stand anything about me. Hey, when Hansen shows up, go ahead and request a new lab for yourself where you can stand there for hours scrawling numbers on chalkboards with nobody bothering you.”

“I don’t hate you,” Hermann repeated, louder this time, pushing himself off his desk and waving his cane to get Newton’s attention. “Newton. _Newton_. Why on earth do you think I drifted with you?”

“To save the world, duh,” Newton replied, slamming down another piece of machinery.

“To save _you_ ,” Hermann blurted out.

Newton looked up, eyes wide behind his glasses. “What?”

“You nearly killed yourself drifting alone! I wasn’t going to let you do it again!”

“Dude, I –“

“No! Let me finish!” Hermann took a shaky breath, trying desperately to keep his voice from cracking. “For ten years I have watched you throw yourself headlong into every experiment, completely disregarding your own safety. I knew it would eventually be the death of you if I didn’t do _something_.”

“But I was right! I was right this time, Hermann, and you—“

“It doesn’t matter if you were bloody right, I would have lost you!” Hermann’s gaze turned pleading. “You’re the only one who talks to me, who _really_ talks to me. If I hated you, I would never have offered to drift with you, even if it meant saving the world. Please believe me, Newt! I couldn’t bear losing you!”

Newton held up his hands. “Okay, okay! I believe you.” He rubbed the back of his neck while Hermann let his gaze drop once more, breathing hard as if he had just run a marathon. “Are… uh, are you all right?”

Hermann pursed his lips into a thin line. “These kinds of conversations aren’t easy for me,” he admitted.

“So I noticed.” Newton’s grin had returned and he stepped toward the line dividing their sides of the lab. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you get that worked up. Well, except for the time I accidentally splattered you with that lung sample…”

“It was a new suit,” Hermann retorted automatically. “And you—“ He cut himself off as a memory suddenly popped into his mind. “Oh,” he breathed. “It really _was_ an accident.”

“You finally figured that out, good job.” Newton scuffed the yellow marking tape under his shoe. “Does this mean we’re friends now?”

Hermann’s brow furrowed and he kept his gaze turned down.

Newton rolled his eyes. “Dude, what is your problem? I like you, you like me, right?”

Hermann blushed.

“Wait a minute.” Newton crossed over to Hermann’s side of the lab and peered at his lab mate’s expression with renewed interest. “Are you… do you _like_ like me?”

Hermann grimaced. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” Newton echoed in disbelief. “Dr. Gottlieb admitting his doesn’t know something? I thought we cancelled the apocalypse.” He stepped closer, nudging Hermann’s shoulder playfully with his hand. “It’s the tattoos, right? Mathematicians totally dig the tattoos.”

Hermann lashed out with his cane and caught Newton at the knee with a satisfying smack.  “It is not your tattoos or your pants or your massive ego the size of a small planet and I do not want to be having this conversation with you!”

“When do you want to have it, then? Over dinner?” Newton asked cheekily, even while rubbing his knee and wincing.

Hermann growled warningly and raised his cane, only to have Newton take advantage and press into him for a full-body hug.

“I’m not poking fun, honest,” Newton insisted, resting his head against Hermann’s shoulder. “I forgot that’s a sore spot for you. Or I just remembered. Whatever. I’m sorry.”

Hermann relaxed slightly, but otherwise didn’t move. Newton patted his back encouragingly. “Hey, I know you know how to hug properly, man, we did this less than twenty-four hours ago. Otherwise this is just me being clingy and that’s weird.”

It was quiet and brief, but Hermann most definitely laughed. He wrapped his arms around Newton’s shoulders and both men could feel the wave of relief through the lingering residuals of the drift.

Tentatively, Hermann lifted up a hand and ran it through Newton’s hair. He repeated the gesture several times, Newton tilting his head receptively towards the touch. “Just so you know,” the biologist commented, “This is definitely a _like_ like thing you are doing, unless you’re pretending I’m a cat, which is kind of cute, but—“

“Shut up.” Hermann’s words lacked much heat, but Newton obliged. A few more hair pets and the taller man pulled away, flushed and uncomfortable but grinning despite himself and looking years younger.

Newton patted Hermann’s hand, the one holding the cane. “We’ll, uh… we should probably talk more about this later, but I’m not going anywhere. So… don’t worry about that, okay? We’re cool?”

“Quite,” Hermann replied.

Marshall Hansen entered the lab and in the time it took him to look up from his clipboard, Newton was on his side of the lab again. “Good morning, gentlemen. I have a disturbingly large amount of paperwork with me but I’ve condensed it into something the three of us can hopefully get through in an hour.” He pulled himself up a chair. “What’s with the goofy smile, Doctor?”

“That’s how he always looks,” Hermann quipped as he watched his lab partner grab a chair of his own.

Hansen gestured at Dr. Gottlieb with his pen. “Was talking about you, mate.”

It took a full minute for Newton to stop giggling, enough time for Hermann to sit down and cross his arms in his usual sulking position, but throughout it all he was fairly certain he was still smiling.


End file.
